Free Playbook · Market Research
Your buyers are having two conversations about you. Most market research only covers one.
The free playbook for researching your market, your audience, and your AI visibility, before you spend a dollar on marketing.
Free. No obligation. No sales call required.
In short
Your buyers now run two searches, one on Google and one inside an AI tool, and the two return different answers. Google ranks pages. AI engines recommend brands. A company can hold the number one Google position and still never get mentioned when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a recommendation. Most market research was only ever built to measure the first conversation. This playbook covers both, in four phases.
The second conversation
The way people research a company has changed
Buyers stopped scrolling Google results and started asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini to recommend a business instead. The search still happens. You just do not see it, and neither does your analytics.
Of Google searches
End without a single click on any result.
SparkToro + Datos, 2024 Zero-Click Search Study, Rand Fishkin, Jan 2025
When an AI Overview appears
The answer gets read on the results page and the visit never happens.
Bain & Company / Dynata, Generative AI Consumer Survey, Dec 2024 (published Feb 2025)
Worth knowing: a click you never receive is not a buyer you never had. It is a buyer who formed an opinion about you somewhere you are not measuring.
Two systems
Google ranks pages. AI engines recommend brands.
Here is the part most businesses miss. A company can hold the number one spot on Google and still never get mentioned when someone asks an AI tool for a recommendation.
Those are two different systems, built on two different kinds of evidence. One evaluates a page against a query. The other evaluates a brand against everything it has been able to learn about that brand from across the open web. Most market research was only ever built to measure the first one.
If your research only measures one conversation, you are optimizing for half your market and guessing at the other half.
Four phases you can run yourself. Free, no obligation.
Our four-phase approach
The exact process, in order
This playbook walks you through the four-phase process Conspicuouz Creative Group (CZ Creative Group) runs with every client, in the order it has to happen. Each phase feeds the next.
- 1
The AI Visibility Baseline
How to measure what AI tools currently believe about your brand, benchmarked against your top three competitors. You cannot improve a score you have never taken.
- 2
The Niche Audience Map
How to find the exact language your buyers use when they ask AI tools for recommendations, which is not the language keyword tools show you. People type differently than they ask.
- 3
The Dual-Layer Gap Analysis
Where Google keyword data and AI citation data overlap, and where your real opportunity is hiding. The gap between the two layers is usually the least contested ground you own.
- 4
The Persona Method
How to build buyer personas from real community conversations instead of demographic guesswork. A persona built from what people actually say beats one built from what a form field captured.
What changes
One layer of research, or two
| Traditional market research | Dual-layer research | |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Search volume and page rankings | Rankings plus what AI engines say about you when asked |
| Where the language comes from | Keyword tools | How buyers actually phrase a request out loud |
| How personas get built | Demographic assumptions | Real community conversations |
| What it misses | Every buyer who asked an AI tool instead of Google | Less, because it measures both conversations |
Before you download
Questions people ask first
What is dual-layer market research?
Dual-layer market research measures two things at once: how your brand performs in traditional search, and how AI engines describe and recommend your brand when a buyer asks them directly. Traditional research covers only the first layer, which leaves the second one unmeasured.
Which AI tools does the playbook cover?
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The method is the same across all of them, so it holds up as new tools arrive.
Do I need to already rank on Google for this to work?
No. Rankings and AI recommendations run on different evidence, so a brand with modest rankings can still be well understood by AI engines, and a brand at number one can be invisible to them. Phase one tells you which situation you are in.
Can I run this myself, or do I need an agency?
You can run all four phases yourself. The playbook is written as a working process, not an overview, and every phase lists what to do and what to record. Bring in help when you want the work done faster or benchmarked at scale.
Is the playbook actually free?
Yes. No purchase, no call, and no commitment. You give an email address, the playbook arrives at that address.
Start here
Research both conversations before you spend
Four phases, in order, with what to do and what to record at each step. Run it yourself before you commit budget to anything.
Free. No obligation. No sales call required.